Fantasy Sports Outlook

Here’s a good evening read for you. I know I don’t link to all of the 90 site’s Russo mentions, but I’d venture to guess I’ve visited them all at one time or another since I’ve been playing fantasy sports.

Christopher J. Russo lives a life of fantasy in the real world. He founded Fantasy Sports Ventures Inc. in 2006. Before that, he spent 15 years in the media business as the vice president for marketing at NBC, the executive vice president for franchise programming/marketing at New Line Cinema and in senior executive positions at the National Football League, where he was the senior vice president for new media-publishing from 1999 to 2005.

While at the N.F.L., Mr. Russo, who earned a master’s degree from the Harvard Business School in 1990, helped start the league’s first fantasy football game.

And while Rotisserie baseball is recognized as the granddaddy of all fantasy sports, football has emerged as the most popular fantasy sport among the 15 million Americans who spend hours massaging statistical data and picking teams. There are now 17 million unique users of fantasy football sites, compared with 3 million fantasy baseball players.

Mr. Russo scored a coup of sorts in the world of online fantasy games when Nielsen Online reported last November that fantasyplayers.com was the No. 4 site among fantasy football destinations, behind Yahoo, ESPN and CBS SportsLine, but ahead of NFL.com, FoxSports.com and SI.com. His company was No. 2 in fantasy baseball.